Trapped (3 page)

A cool wind ruffled the dark strands of hair that had come loose from her braids, tickling her neck. A light mist kissed her skin. “Pretty. It looks like Earth.”

Leo kept on. “But it has been around longer and we're further along in every aspect.” He pointed at a distant city, with hundreds of tall buildings.

“We have cities too,” said Sarah.

“But we are especially advanced in technology. Space travel, for one.”

And then they were back on the ship with the others and Sarah felt the motion again. But there was something else as well, as if the beings on the ship were not just on a vacation. She sensed an urgency that something major depended on the journey.

The others seemed to be, she felt,
desperate.

“When is this?” asked Sarah.

“In your time?” Leo's forehead wrinkled for a moment. “Probably seven hundred years ago.”

Sarah swallowed. “Wow.”

Leo pulled her over to a glass wall.

Sarah gazed down on Earth, so big and real. She reached out a hand to touch it, but felt only glass.

Leo said, “They chose to disembark on the largest continent.”

Sarah pointed to the landform below. “Africa.” Suddenly, her stomach leaped as the craft descended. “We're landing there
now?
”

Leo nodded. “This is then.”

Sarah gulped. “Seven hundred years ago? In
Africa
?” She racked her brain to remember what she'd learned in history about that time period. Seven hundred years ago, much of the planet was unsettled, wasn't it?

Would anyone they met be friendly?

Leo turned to the wall opposite the glass. A panel slid open. “Come.” He led her out of the ship, following some of the others who still seemed not to notice Leo and Sarah. The thick, warm air of the orange African dawn greeted them. Sarah stepped down onto the scrubland. The sand gave way under her feet, feeling as real as any ground she'd ever stood upon.

About a half mile away loomed an enormous reddish-brown cliff that seemed, to Sarah, nearly the height of the Sears Tower. Sarah and her father had gone to the top when they visited Chicago last summer.

Before he had remarried.

Before she had two stepbrothers.

Before this nightmare of a trip.

Sarah sighed.

She gazed to the left and right, unable to see where the behemoth of a landform began or ended.

Not wasting any time, the group began to stride toward the cliff. Leo and Sarah followed close behind. The acrid smell of woodsmoke drifted toward them on the breeze, and a rooster crowed. She almost smiled at the easily identifiable sound, until she heard something she didn't recognize.

Whump. Whump. Whump.

She had no idea what could be causing the noise, a thought that made her heart speed up. Sarah swallowed. Her throat was so dry. Being nervous made her feel even more parched.

The group stopped, facing the cliff.

Whump. Whump. Whump.

What did they see? Sarah noticed only the steep wall jutting straight up, and the plateau on top. But the others stared at the base of the cliff. They obviously saw something there.

“What are they looking at?” she asked.

Leo pointed. “Don't you see?”

Sarah lowered her gaze in the direction of his arm. Then she gasped. An entire village was built into the side of the escarpment: dwellings made of dull-colored mud that blended perfectly into the color of the cliff, perfectly camouflaged. The homes were box shaped with flat roofs, holes cut out of the walls for windows. They all seemed connected to one another.

Among every few homes perched up off the ground on stilts was a cone-shaped building with a thatched roof. All of the buildings seemed to defy gravity, as if somehow attached to the cliff itself.

As the group headed closer to the village, the rhythmic pounding grew louder.

WHUMP! WHUMP! WHUMP!

Sarah tightened her grip on Leo's hand as her heart beat faster.

The group reached the edge of the buildings and stopped. They blocked Sarah's view, so she leaned out to see around them, hoping that she was as invisible to all of them as she suspected.

Sarah relaxed when she saw the source of the sound: three women pounding long, thick carved wooden rods up and down. “What are they doing?”

“Crushing millet. They make flour from it.” Leo pointed to one of the cone-shaped structures. “They store the grain in those.”

Suddenly, the women stopped their work and turned to face the group of strangers. One wiped her dark, glistening brow, and then called out. People emerged from the dwellings. A few heads popped up from the roof of a house, as if they'd slept there. A group of laughing children ran out from behind the buildings, barely clothed, their skin sprinkled with dust. They froze, staring with wide, dark eyes at the strangers.

Sarah glanced down at her feet. They were covered in the same dust. Before she could consider how that might be possible, how she could get dirty from a memory, Leo dropped her hand.

She was back on the beach.

Marco stared at Leo with a look of annoyance. “Well? Are you going to show her something or not?”

 

4

Before Sarah opened her eyes and frowned at him, Marco had watched her and Leo simply stand there and hold hands.

Sarah answered his question. “But he did show me. We were gone forever.”

“What are you talking about?” Marco shook his head. “You've been standing right there.”

“No!” Sarah sounded frustrated.

Marco could tell she thought he didn't believe her. And he didn't, not at all. She and Leo hadn't done anything except close their eyes and hold hands for a minute or two.

Yet she tried to convince him. “We were on a spaceship. And we landed in Africa.”

Marco couldn't help but smile at the absurdity. “Right.”

Sarah glared at him before turning to Leo. “Why did you let go of my hand?”

“I want you both to see it.” Leo asked Marco, “Are you ready to take a trek in the memories?”

Marco was tired of Leo's delays. He wanted to unfreeze his brother and stepdad, get back to his mom, and figure out how to get off the stupid island. “The only trek I'm taking is back inside to get my brother.” He told Sarah, “Let's go.”

Before Marco could stop him, Leo grabbed his hand and Sarah's.

Suddenly, Marco found himself next to a soaring cliff, surrounded by people clothed in blue, their faces somewhat blurred. He squinted and tried to get a better look at them as children ran past, stirring up dust that drifted onto his legs.

“See?” Sarah's voice woke him up. She and Leo were in far clearer focus than the people in blue.

Marco asked, “Where are we?”

“Western Africa. About seven hundred years ago,” Leo said.

Marco wasn't exactly sure how much he believed. But that place, that moment, felt so
real
he found it hard
not to
believe.

Adult villagers emerged from some of the dwellings, naked except for coverings on the more private parts of their bodies. Marco stepped closer to one of the structures. The door was wooden, carved so elaborately with figures of people and animals that he couldn't resist reaching out with his free hand to touch it. Why did the carvings seem familiar?

“Wait!” His eyes darted to his feet and he whipped around. “The tube! I lost it!”

Leo said, “It's back at the beach. It wouldn't work here anyway.”

Marco relaxed. Strange, but he didn't feel frightened. For some reason, he felt himself trusting the boy from the stars.

An old man with a gray beard walked up to Leo's people and spoke to them. The man appeared to be kind, and seemed to welcome them, although Marco couldn't understand his language.

Sarah said, “They don't seem afraid of you at all.”

Leo shook his head. “No. My people were welcomed.”

“How did they know the language?” asked Marco.

Leo nodded at his wrist, and a thin black bracelet Marco hadn't noticed before. “One of our advancements. Almost like an implant that filters our language into anyone else's. And the other way around.”

“Cool.” Marco stood with Sarah and Leo at the edge of the activity. They observed as the villagers brought some kind of porridge that Leo's people quickly tucked into.

The scene fuzzed up.

With his free hand, Marco rubbed his eyes, but his vision didn't clear. “What's going on?”

Leo said, “There's more I have to show you before you see what happened next.”

Sarah screeched.

Marco found himself floating in black space, his limbs weightless and awkward. Chill air rushed around him loudly, stars dazzlingly bright in front of him. His heart pounded.

Marco clutched Leo's hand more tightly, not exactly sure what might happen if he let go. But he
was
certain that he didn't want to find out.

Leo must have sensed their fear, because he reassured them. “We're fine! Look. That star is Sirius.”

Marco gulped as they seemed to fly over and around the star. He flutter-kicked and made a lame attempt at half a forward crawl with his free arm, but nothing seemed to help him get control of his body. So he let himself drift, steered along by Leo.

Nacho would have loved it.

And then there was another star that orbited Sirius. Leo said, “This star is invisible from Earth, and its orbit around Sirius takes fifty years.”

Suddenly, Saturn streamed past in front of them, resplendent rings so blinding that Marco shielded his eyes with his free arm as he swallowed a scream.

Leo said, “My people told the tribe about Sirius and the star. And about the four moons of Jupiter—”

“
Don't
take us to Jupiter!” shouted Sarah.

Marco was relieved, because he was thinking the same thing. His stomach did flips, and he was afraid he was going to hurl. For the first time, he felt a little empathy for Sarah and her bout of motion sickness on the
Moonflight
.

“These were all things your Earth people hadn't even discovered yet.” Leo dropped their hands.

They were back on the beach.

Marco took a deep breath. The white tube was still in his hand, which was now trembling. “This sounds familiar. Nacho made me watch this show with him once.”

“I wouldn't think Nacho could ever make you do anything,” said Sarah.

Marco shrugged. “He was sick. I felt bad for him.”

Sarah raised her eyebrows. “That was nice.”

Marco ignored her mild surprise and continued. “This tribe in Africa never had contact with anyone until some anthropologists showed up in the 1930s. And the tribe had these wild myths, how they'd been visited by beings from an advanced culture.”

Sarah asked, “Did they believe them?”

Marco shook his head. “Not at first. But they knew about the four moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn.” He shivered slightly, remembering how close he had just been to that planet, even if it hadn't actually been real.

Had it?

“Someone could have told them,” said Sarah.

“Yeah,” said Marco. “But then they spoke about Sirius B.”

“What's that?” asked Sarah.

Leo spoke up. “The object we saw orbiting Sirius.”

Marco nodded. “And it wasn't photographed until 1970. But the tribe knew about it long before then.” He met Leo's gaze.

Leo smiled a little. “Because they had been told by my people.”

Something nagged at Marco, some other detail from the show that he couldn't quite remember, something even odder than the rest. He wished Nacho were there. His brother would know.

Sarah asked Leo, “But that was it? They told the tribe some stuff and went back home?”

“Not exactly. My people were on a mission.”

Sarah glanced at Marco, who asked, “What kind of mission?”

“Our planet is very similar to Earth,” said Leo.

“You already showed me that.” Sarah looked down at the sand.

Marco wondered if she had the same weird feeling about Leo that he did. Because the boy was obviously on some kind of mission himself.

Leo said, “Your planet has limited resources. Which your people are beginning to realize.”

Sarah said, “Nacho explained to me about the exoplanets.” She bit her lip. “He would be excited to learn that it's all true. But he's not here.”

Marco frowned. His little brother
was
there, just not able to walk or talk or be with them, because he was frozen. His frustration bubbled up. “Can you get to it? Tell us why my brother is frozen and you can't let him out?”

Leo glanced over at Marco and sidled away from him slightly. “The history of my people
is
getting to it.” He reached up and wiped sweat off his face, then took a deep breath. “This is what you may find hard to believe. Because your civilization isn't there yet. But my people created the
progenitor
.”

“What's that?” asked Sarah.

“It allowed us to replicate whatever we wanted.” Leo walked down toward the water. He took off his shoes and let a wave lap up over his feet.

Sarah followed him. “You probably shouldn't get that close to the water.”

Marco caught up too. “I don't get it. You can just
make
whatever you want? Like the grilled cheese?”

Leo backed away from the water a bit and stepped back into his shoes. “The food center on my ship was created from the same technology.”

Sarah asked, “What else could you replicate besides food?”

Leo shrugged. “Objects. Plants. Animals. Whatever we chose.”

Marco thought out loud, “So it's like a 3-D printer.”

“Only times like a million!” added Sarah. “How cool is that.”

“There were problems.” Leo scratched his head. “It was so much power and caused fights over who should control it. Eventually, the leaders decided it was too much power for anyone to have. So they split it in two.”